All it’s cracked up to be?

It has been a little over a year since the White House launched it’s “We the People” website to encourage online engagement in national issues. Has it worked? In the Washington Post, David Nakamura looks at how the platform has been used so far and answers “not really”:

The people have spoken, but it might not be what the Obama administration expected to hear. More than a year after it was launched, an ambitious White House online petition program aimed at encouraging civic participation has become cluttered with thousands of demands that are often little more than extended Internet jokes. Interest has escalated in the wake of Obama’s reelection, which spurred more than a dozen efforts from tens of thousands of petitioners seeking permission for their states to secede from the union.